Written by Optimus in partnership with Valani Global, BDO and KR Consulting.
Compliance can’t be achieved without substantial alignment of supporting IT systems to match new accounting policies, data accessibility, and data analytics/reporting requirements. For many insurers, this is the time to question the investment in upgrading legacy point-to-point systems using IFRS 17 as the catalyst to upgrade to a data hub that captures all components of the requirement-allowing for alignment of the data flows for the end-to-end process.
Here are a few of the key implementation realities that insurers are faced with as they look to decide on upgrading their point-to-point system or upgrade to a new data hub environment:
- The complexity of data integration for most IFRS 17 implementations is high given the significant footprint of policy, claims, financial, investments, and reinsurance data usually residing in a variety of source systems.
- The approach to data integration is a key consideration for the IT department because of its broader impact across the technology and data landscape. Those who combine the integration needs of IFRS 17 with the integration needs of other business objectives are able to achieve economies of scale in doing them together, leveraging the same integration strategy and platform.
- IFRS 17 presents a catalyst opportunity for IT to move away from a legacy point-to-point approach and adopt a modern hub approach. This facilitates the data connectivity for IFRS 17 and sets the foundation for data maturity advancement, enabling advance analytics outcomes that leverage the potential of artificial intelligence.
- When looking at the total cost of ownership, agility, maintainability, advancing data maturity, advancing analytics, and being cloud ready, there’s a clear advantage for a data hub strategy versus a point-to-point strategy.
- Given the rich dataset required for IFRS 17, it’s a great opportunity to take a look at your enterprise integration strategy and progressively modernize it through the IFRS 17 initiative.
While many insurers may challenge the cost/benefit of transitioning to newer data hub environments as they seek to comply with the new standard, our experience is that building on a point-to-point strategy is or more expensive that implementing a new data hub platform. Such upgrades also do not easily position the insurer to advance their overall data maturity/governance and to set the stage for capitalizing on the potential of advanced analytics.
With the compliance deadline fast approaching, insurers need to be rapidly examining and acting on their compliance plans.
We have established a data hub accelerator known as Insurhub based on the Microsoft Azure platform that accelerates the path to IFRS 17 compliance and advances an insurers data maturity for advanced analytics. The Insurhub accelerator shortens the timeline of IFRS 17 implementations with a library of data connectors, a data lake repository aligned with the requirements of IFRS 17, key financial statements and management reports, and collection of advanced analytics models.
